Sunday, April 10, 2016

ARC Review: To Win Her Heart by Mackenzie Crowne

Country music’s It Girl Jessi Tucker is fed up with her family’s stifling security measures. The threat of a dangerous stalker has gotten the men in her life—including her football star cousin, Tuck Tucker—monitoring her every move. To get the freedom she yearns for, Jessi hatches a plan to recruit Max Grayson, Tuck’s sexy brawler best friend, to play the role of her new boyfriend. But if her scheme works, will she be forced to hide her true romantic feelings for the sake of her independence? Or will she finally steal the heart of her dream man?...

Max has been pining for Jessi for years and would do anything to protect her, but a professional cage fighter with too many skeletons in his closet has no business being with one of America’s sweethearts. Yet while Max does his best to keep Jessi at arm’s length, the Tucker family persuades him to accept her offer.

Max believes he can keep Jessi safe from danger, but can he shelter her from his own dark secrets, the media’s unforgiving spotlight—and a mutual desire that’s harder to resist each day…

***MY REVIEW***

I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

5 out of 5 stars

To Win Her Heart is by far my favorite book in this series so far! Jessi and Max's story was absolutely wonderful and I actually have no complaints about this book at all. Seriously, this book was absolutely flawless.

Jessi and Max were both really, really good together. I thought that I would be a little bit put off by the fact that he only agreed to be her "fake" boyfriend because her father asked him to keep an eye on her because of the creepy fan mail she was getting, but I kind of liked that that was how their relationship unfolded. I say this because while Max originally agreed to the arrangement to keep her safe, while he was pretending to be her boyfriend he really put her first in all things including making it possible for her to finally relax and giving her a little nudge to finally realize what she really wanted to do with her life. Also it was more believable for Max to agree to the arrangement for her safety than anything else because of the type of character he was and it also allowed for their relationship to evolve more naturally and believably as they spent more time together despite all of Max's hang-ups caused by his despicable grandmother.

And talking about Max's horrible grandmother, I really loved how the characters especially Jessi dealt with that situation. I won't say exactly what she did because of spoilers but I totally wanted to high five Jessi because of what she did for Max. That along with what she did at the end of the book to get Max to realize how much she loved him was absolutely glorious and made her my favorite character in this entire series. Aside from the grandma drama, I also really liked the creepy fan mail storyline. It could have been a bit more developed in my opinion, but I really liked that I was completely blind-sided by who ended up being behind the messages.

But as much as I loved Jessi and Max as a couple, the biggest highlight for me in this book was all of their interactions with the couples from previous books because I always love to get see couples after they get HEA. So seeing Gracie and Jake and CC and Tuck so blissfully married made me so happy.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed reading To Win Her Heart. Mac completely hit it out of the park with this book and I loved it so much!